Medlock Ames Tasting Room now open

The rain slowed them down.

Homemade pickles and canned peppers. Photo by Carey Sweet.

That, and an increasingly ambitious design plan, including a pair of custom-made, high-style refrigerators that stand like sentinels in the tasting room of the new Medlock Ames Alexander Valley Store and Bar.

Yet despite torrents that pelted the Sonoma County landscape throughout the winter, the space debuted May 15, just a few months behind schedule. By next week, a speakeasy will open next to the tasting room, followed quickly by the launch of a mini farmer’s market, and all flanked by lush organic gardens that cover nearly every inch of the two-acre property on Alexander Valley Road at Highway 128.

As Medlock Ames general manager Kenny Rochford leaned on the gray metal bar that anchors the center of the tasting room, he looked around the modern-looking space that still feels – if you know the property’s history – just a bit like the century-old retail grocery and bar that winery entrepreneurs Chris Medlock James and Ames Morison shuttered last March.

“It’s really evolved,” he said, pointing out the recycled miner’s lanterns hanging over the antique school desk seats. “We’re wine, cocktails, maybe just a place to enjoy a wee pint.”

Wine tasting in the new tasting room. Photo by Carey Sweet.

The idea started as just a tasting room to showcase Medlock-Ames’ wines, which are famously produced from sustainable, organic and biodynamic grapes. Their actual winery, close by on Chalk Hill Road, is closed to the public.

There would be some snacks – nibbles like olives, cheeses, pickles, breads and such. “All the amazing stuff Sonoma produces,” says Rochford. “So good it breaks my heart.”

Yet as the architects looked at the well-loved but rundown historic property, they came up with bigger ideas. The store had been a neighborhood fixture since the early 1900s, and when a bar was added in the 1960s, the rough, dark building turned into a haven for bikers and folks who liked to hoist a few no matter the time of day.

So in the reinvention, there are now cocktails, served in a small speakeasy for imbibers who are savvy enough to know where the bar is, despite a hidden door and nothing so tacky as a sign. Framed by windows that roll up into doors, and furnished with an old factory table anchored with metal swivel stools, the room hints of its past with bits of rusted metal peeking through weathered wood walls.

Where gas pumps used to stand soon will be a farmer’s market, brimming with the organic goodies that Medlock Ames grows at their Bell Mountain Ranch nearby.

For heartier fare like sandwiches, folks will be directed to Jimtown Store just up the road, but Rochford soon will unveil some signature treats. “Full picnic baskets,” he says. “And pie. Pie seems to

Entrance to great wine tasting at Medlock Ames. Photo by Carey Sweet.

come up a lot in what people really want.”

Through it all is woven a green theme, from the reclaimed building itself, to the recycled materials used for new construction, to the elaborate gardens and meadow planted with indigenous flora.

That garden, by the way, is more than just a lovely-to-look-at salute to environmental preservation. It will grow ingredients for the speakeasy cocktails, planted with licorice, cassis, and other fresh, edible mix-ins.

Drinks may be garnished with sweet Jimmy Nardello peppers and olives, accented with Buddha’s Hand lime or ollaliberries, and muddled with kumquats, blood orange, Lisbon lemon and kaffir lime.

A line of pineapple guava bushes rims a length of the garden, and Rochford anticipates a prolific harvest.

“I think pretty much every cocktail is going to have pineapple guava for a while,” he laughs.

Details: Alexander Valley Store and Bar, 6487 Highway 128, Healdsburg, 707-431-8845. medlockames.com.
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